Decentralising the classroom, decentring the social sciences

Description

This course will examine the state of the world in terms of democratic legitimacy by analyzing the link established (or not) by intellectual and political agents between “democracy” and “the people”. It will focus on the role the social sciences play in the homogenization and circulation of ideas about political power and its legitimization around the world and teach how to emancipate from mainstream or dominant frameworks. Interactive activities (debates, co-working) will take place during some of the sessions.
This new course is a teaching and learning experiment linking together three students’ groups and teaching staff from Strasbourg, Brazil and Santiago (Chile). It decentralizes the classroom by integrating lecturers and students from diverse locations and academic traditions.
This course will be held jointly with sessions in hybrid format, linking the three classrooms at the same time, with the permanent presence of the local teaching staff. In Strasbourg, the sessions will be in-person classes (in-classroom meetings), with our Brazilian and Chilean colleagues online.
In strong coherence with its organisation, the course deals with the effects of international knowledge circulation within the social sciences. The course problematizes the unequal treatment of social science approaches from different locations, reflects upon processes of “canonisation”, questions established canons, and gives the students tools and frameworks to decentralise the social sciences as they are taught in the participating locations. The trans-regional perspective offers a framework for students to emancipate from some of the dominating mainstream frameworks about political and sociological thought.

General topic: democracy and the people
The course theme will allow each of the professors to develop a topic of their own expertise, with a joint core concern around the localised production and transnational circulation of experiences of democratisation and approaches to the concept of democracy. The course will focus on the particular issue of popular representation, linking the problematic of the course with the contemporary criticisms of liberal democracy, whether they are theorised as “illiberal” or as “populist”.

Bibliographie

BARRETO, Raquel, "Amefricanity: The black feminism of Lélia Gonzalez". Radical Philosophy 209, Winter 2020, pp. 15–20. Available at: <https://www.radicalphilosophy.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/rp209_barreto.pdf>.
CLEEN, Benjamin de (2017): "Populism and Nationalism". In: Rovira Kaltwasser, Taggart et al. (Ed.) 2017 – The Oxford handbook of populism. Oxford University Press; 342-362
GENDLER, M.A. (2021) Internet, algoritmos y democracia ¿Del sueño a la pesadilla? Revista Nueva Sociedad No 294: 38-48. [Available at: https://biblat.unam.mx/es/revista/nueva-sociedad/articulo/internet-algoritmos-y-democracia-del-sueno-a-la-pesadilla] and will be translated for non-Spanish speakers
LAGO MARTÍNEZ, S., GENDLER, M. & MÉNDEZ, A. (2021) Movimientos sociales, apropiación de tecnologías digitales y transformaciones en los procesos de acción colectiva. In F. Sierra, S. Leetoy & T. Gravante (eds) Democracia inconclusa: Movimientos sociales, esfera pública y redes digitales. Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México & Centro de Investigaciones Interdisciplinarias en Ciencias y Humanidades, pp. 101-122 [Available at: https://ru.ceiich.unam.mx/handle/123456789/3795] and will be translated for non-Spanish speakers.
PERRY, Keisha-Khan Y. & SOTERO, Edilza. "Amefricanidade: The Black Diaspora Feminism of Lélia Gonzalez". Lasa Forum 50.3, Summer 2019, pp. 60-64.
RIOS, Flavia. "Améfrica Ladina: The Conceptual Legacy of Lélia Gonzalez (1935–1994)". Lasa Forum 50.3, Summer 2019, pp. 75-79.